Tag: advertising

Only if you kill it

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A couple of examples of how to make advertisement in the shape of content, or content in the shape of advertisement.

Anticipated. Personal. Relevant.

Both are from the last episode of the podcast Pivot, with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

First, around minute 19:10, during the break for commercials, Kara interviews Gavin Belson, the fictional CEO of the fictional company Hooli from the HBO series Silicon Valley. The interview is fictitious and funny, perfectly in line both with the tone of the podcast people are listening to and with the irony of the series. A perfect match.

Then, right after the break, at about 22:10, Arielle Duhaime-Ross, host of the podcast Reset (that shares the same producer with Pivot) jumps on the show to ask a thoughtful question to Kara and Scott about sharenting (parents that share the life of their kids on social media), that’s of course the topic of the last episode of her show.

There is a whole lot of space to be creative, original, interesting and entertaining with promoting products and services in today’s content-driven landscape. As marketers, we should just make the effort to understand: the channel and the audience, first of all, and the irreparable damage that gets done when instead we feed commercials wrapped in plastic to an indistinct mass of people, violently interrupting whatever they are doing.

Advertising is dead only if you kill it.

Get to their point

FabrizioLeave a comment

The more words you use to describe what you do, the less the chances it’s going to be relevant for the person you are introducing it to.

We got used to jargon, adverbs, adjectives, buzz words, complex sentences, convoluted paragraphs, confusing language tricks and zero substance. Our brain is trained to disconnect as soon as things get too fuzzy. We lose our audience before we can even explain what it is we do.

The antidote to this is talking to the people you want to serve.

For 99% of our awake time, we are ourselves people someone else wants to serve. Yet, when our roles switch, we start believing the same things that would get our attention and money need to be made more complicated.

No one has time to waste on your pitch, save them time and get to their point.

How would you feel?

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What if you would become an expert in things those you seek to serve are interested in?

What if, instead of 20 blog posts a month you would write only one this time around? And then the next month. And the next. And the next.

What if you would have the time to thouroughly research your topics, interview experts, collect data, put together arguments from different areas, come up with something truly original?

What if your content would be the single choice for those you seek to serve, the only one article they would seek, wait for, read in the whole month?

How many visitors, contacts, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, deals would you get?

And, most importantly, how would it make you feel? How would it make your audience feel?

Openly ask

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Do you ever bother to openly ask?

A team member, what they would like to work on.

A customer, how they will be using your product.

A user, what topic would they be happy receiving content about.

Your partner, how would they feel if something would happen.

Your boss, what’s keeping them up at night.

Most of our businesses and lives are based on assumptions. Sometimes we hide them under the labels “experience” and “data”, and yet assumptions they are and they will be.

Should we instead bother and ask the question?

A whole lot more

FabrizioLeave a comment

I can find all the praises for your product or service easily.

I can talk to one of your reps in minutes.

If I prefer so, your chatbot will guide me to the content most relevant to my situation.

I can painlessly answer a survey to help you improve your website, and with one single click give you consent to using (and share) information about my interests.

Your marketing will seek me out to offer more, for free, as long as I stay engaged.

That rep is still trying to schedule a follow-up call to offer a discount if I sign now.

And then, once I am finally your customer, if I need some information, I have to dig them out of an overly complicated help center page, or pray for a telephone number to appear below one of the folds of your website and wait in queue.

And if I decide that, for any reason, I do not need your service anymore, you frustrate the hell out of me with rules, counteroffers, bundles, and eventually a cold goodbye.

There’s no balance in the way companies allocate budget throughout the customer journey. Or perhaps it’s just they think the journey ends when the customer has paid.

There’s a whole lot more to it.